Assuming you mean the sideband pins, the article says that Intel is working on a standard to let those pins be used for analog audio.

If there's no standard way to communicate that "yeah, the sideband pins are now analog audio out from the host", I don't think you can buld USB-compliant accessories that assume that.

This would mean that the adapter (and/or low-cost headphones, I guess) would still need to include a CPU that can speak USB to negotiate with the host about the sideband pins, would be my assumption. A bit like how max current (used to) work.